Red Skies At Morning: For AUKUS Agreement, 'Devil Is in the Details'.

Part two of the long road to provide Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines--known as the AUKUS agreement--got underway March 13 when the leaders of the three allies involved revealed an outline of the decades-long plan to the public in San Diego.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden revealed details of the arrangement for Australia to acquire a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability through the Australia-United Kingdom-United States, or AUKUS, enhanced security partnership.

The announcement followed 18 months of studies investigating just how such a complex arrangement will work out.

"The broad brushstrokes all look perfectly fine. But to be honest, you don't solve the problem just by saying you're going to solve the problem," said Mark Watson, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Washington, D.C., office.

"There's an awful lot of devils lurking in an awful lot of details yet to be delivered," he said in an interview.

The agreement will unfold in three phases, with the first being Australian sailors serving aboard U.S. boats beginning this year and U.K. nuclear-powered submarines starting in 2026. That will continue through the end of the decade. There will also be personnel exchanges between the industrial bases to build up Australia's skills in operating nuclear-powered submarines.

As early as 2027, the United States and United Kingdom plan to begin forward rotations of SSNs to the Indo-Pacific, with Australian sailors aboard to accelerate the development of local naval personnel, workforce, infrastructure and the regulatory system necessary to establish a sovereign SSN capability, a joint statement said. These subs will operate out of an Australian base and be known as the Submarine Rotational Force-West.

Phase two will have Australia procure three--possibly up to five --U.S.-built nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s.

Phase three will call for the remainder of the fleet to be new purpose-built submarines with a U.K. hull and U.S.-based systems inside--called the SSN-AUKUS--to be constructed at first in the United Kingdom in the late 2030s. Australia will deliver the first SSN-AUKUS built in Australia to the Royal Australian Navy in the early 2040s, the statement said.

"This plan is designed to support Australia's development of the infrastructure, technical capabilities, industry and...